Vartype has to return something. What did the other two lines show?

BTW, ipaddr is probably already a character string...because the type() function expects a character string as its parameter.

For example:

? vartype(cXyz)  && should show "U", since it is not defined yet
cXyz = "nXyz"
? type(cXyz)  && should show "U"
? vartype(cXyz)  && should show "C"
nXyz = 5
? type(cXyz)  && should show "N"-->because it really refers to nXyz
? type("nXyz") && should show "N"
? vartype(nXyz) && should show "N"
? type(nXyz)  && should crash, because type needs a character expression to evaluate

HTH...

>when i do vartype i have nothing